The air taxi industry in Canada experiences more accidents and more fatalities than all other sectors of the country’s commercial aviation industry combined, in part because of a weak safety culture that has resulted in unsafe practices being considered acceptable, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) says.
In releasing a 214-page report — Safety Issue Investigation Report A15H0001, Raising the Bar on Safety: Reducing the Risks Associated With Air-Taxi Operations in Canada1 — the TSB called on the industry and the Department of Transport to develop strategies to aid operators in ending the acceptance of unsafe practices and improving their management of operational hazards.
“The acceptance of unsafe practices is incremental and largely invisible to operators, making it difficult for operators to realize how much the safety margin has been eroded,” the report said, referring to some of the most common unsafe practices identified in air taxi a…
